Apr 28, 2011

By Terry Eye Sculpting Brush

i have never tried anything from By Terry, the cosmetic brand from Terry de Gunzburg, make up artist and former director of make up design at YSL, originator of the infamous Touche Éclat. when i browsed through some different online shops, i found her brush line, which seemed to be newly released. it contains some basic brushes, but i was only interested in the eye brushes. and since i don't own any brush of this shape yet, i chose the Eye Sculpting Brush to try.
i ordered on niche-beauty.com, a german online shop with some hard-to-find beauty brands. By Terry is quite an expensive line, i paid 30€ for this brush but they didn't charge any delivery costs.
the delivery time was quite fast, my package came carefully wrapped in pink silk paper and a bubble wrap bag. you could choose 3 different samples, i went for 3 x Rodial.

the brush comes in a box and has a protective wrap around, nothing special. the brush itself is rather short. it's ferrule and handle is made very beautifully and detailed with silver metal. it doesn't attract so many fingerprints like i have worried. it has a delicate checkered pattern of "By Terry" lettering engraved. it lays well in the hand and has a nice weight. it seems to be very sturdy and well made.

the brush head is dense and precisely shaped like a doe foot with a sharp angle. it's made of brown goat hair i think. it only has a very slight animal scent which disappears completely after the first wash. it washes well, only bled a minimal amount of greyish dye and didn't shed at all. it dries without getting out of shape.

By Terry Eye Sculpting Brush, pre wash

By Terry Eye Sculpting Brush, pre wash

By Terry Eye Sculpting Brush, post wash

BUT: the hair seems a bit coarse to me. it's cut at the hair ends to achieve the shape, but if used with its angled surface, it feels scratchy to the delicate skin of the lid.
and, another thing i still hassle with: what to use it for? do you have such a brush? how do you use it??
i tried to use it as a crease brush, but it's surface is too big for my rather small lid space. such a special shape but only using as brow highlight brush or all over lid brush seems not to do justice to it. hmm...
i'll have to work out a good way to use it.

By Terry Eye Sculpting Brush - MAC 217

By Terry Eye Sculpting Brush - MAC 217

i'm a bit stucked with the By Terry Brush line, this one feels very high quality, but the (maybe) the shape determines the cut and coarse hair. so on the one side i want to write them off, but on the other side i still hope to get soft brushes with beautiful handles if i try further.

UPDATE: i just checked this review about the same brush, but an older version of it at The Non-Blonde. she said it was very soft, so i'm afraid they stepped up on the design and quality of the handle, but took a step down with their hair quality.